What Do You Call It? A Wallet!

I got a new wallet from my father at Christmas. I figure that puts the tally at about ten wallets from my sister and I to him in childhood, and now finally one coming to me from him (which is unbalanced, but not too bad when one considers how the book deficit slants the other direction). It's a very nice wallet, and almost certainly is the nicest that I've ever had. It's made of supple leather, and after some weeks in my pocket still smells like a department store. I think that's good.

It's a considerably more mature wallet than those I've had before with chains and ostentatious insignias. Used properly, it will probably help create more flattering lines on my form, and will be somewhat more impressive when I remove it in the presence of a lady. I say used properly because I'm not exactly the easiest on my possessions. As obsessive as I get you'd think I'd treat them very well and I mean to, but my resolve breaks and I end up going from unreasonable precautions to none at all.

It has held up well in the short term anyway, which is remarkable considering how I am. It's packed full of about every possession I have that's small and flat. I don't comb through it often enough, and so it fills with redundant items, library cards from other cities, receipts for things I have no intention of claiming on my taxes, and so forth. Inevitably the leather with grow taut and it will be as worn as the one I have now discarded, but one can't look at new possessions and think more about how they'll end up than how they are.

Thinking about the wallet I have now and the one I just had, I then get to thinking about how it was before even my first wallet, which I can't now remember. There was a time in memory when I carried no money outside of the occasional quarter and possessed no idea apart from the birth certificate and social security card of which I was surely ignorant. I'd feel naked now in pants with empty pockets, but then there was no other way. I'd just as soon go back, but failing that this wallet is awfully nice and I will value it.